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Monday, February 20, 2012

There are times when you need an easy way to access items such as folders, files or web pages. One way to access them easily is to create shortcuts to these items. This tutorial will teach you how to create shortcuts to all kinds of items, so that you can create your own system of easy to access items.

How To Create a Shortcut to a Program

Right click on the Desktop or the area where you want to place the shortcut. In the right-click menu, go to New and select Shortcut.

The Create Shortcut wizard opens. Here, you need to select the path to the program. Click on theBrowse button to begin.Navigate to the folder where the program is located and select its executable file. When done, click the OK button.

As an example, in the picture below, I have chosen to create a shortcut to the Command Prompt. Therefore I needed to navigate to'C:\Windows\System32'and select the file cmd.exe file which is the executable of the Command Prompt.Press the Next button to continue.Now you need to enter the name of the shortcut. Type it and press the Finish button.The shortcut is now created. For my example, the shortcut is named 'Run Command Prompt' and is now placed on my Desktop.

How To Create a Shortcut to a Folder

To create a shortcut to a folder, use the same steps shown in the previous section of this article: right click on the area where you want to create shortcut, select New –> Shortcut and press theBrowse button.

The only difference is that, instead of selecting a file, you select an entire folder. Once you selected the folder, click OK.

Let's take as example the 7tutorials folder, located on the'D:'drive, on my computer.

Then, press Next, type the name of the shortcut and then click Finish. The shortcut is now created.

For my example, the shortcut is named 7tutorials and is now placed on my Desktop.

How To Create a Shortcut to a Web Page

To create a shortcut to a web page, use the same steps shown in the first section of this article: right click on the area where you want to create shortcut and select New –> Shortcut .

Instead of pressing Browse, simply type the address of the website towards which you want to create the shortcut.

When you are done, press the Next button.Type a name for the shortcut you want to create and press Finish.Now the shortcut is created.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: As you can see in the screenshot below, the shortcut I created has the Internet Explorer icon. That's because when using this shortcut, the web page will be opened in Internet Explorer - my default Internet browser.

If you have set your computer to use a different browser as default, the icon will be the one used by your default browser. Shortcuts to web pages created using this procedure will always have the icon of your default Internet browser and be opened using it and no other browsers installed on your computer.

Conclusion

As you can see from this tutorial, Windows 7 offers a very easy to use wizard to create any type of shortcuts. With just a few clicks, you can create shortcuts to your favorites programs, folders or web pages. If you have any questions on this topic, don't hesitate to use the comment form below. Also, don't hesitate to check the articles recommended below.